


find your way (find you alive)

by Muir_Wolf



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 18:02:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3298967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muir_Wolf/pseuds/Muir_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Come to see me off?" she asks with forced brightness.  He's leaning against the doorway, his face solemn, and she licks dry lips, blinks full eyes.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>(going away to war au - set post LotLT)</p>
            </blockquote>





	find your way (find you alive)

Martha's hands are trembling, just a little, as she tugs at the suitcase zipper. She still has six months before she finishes med school—she was supposed to be safe from the draft. They're running low on young, healthy doctors, though—running low on young, healthy bodies, period - and they've started pressuring medical schools to sign off early on the students that are good enough to get pushed through early. Martha's good enough. Martha Jones is top of her class, and who knew that could be a bad thing.

"Martha." The Doctor's voice is low behind her. She didn't know he was there—doesn't know how long he's been there, watching her—but she's not surprised. He's been trying to talk her into running away with him for months, now. The world's falling apart around them, against all his future's history books promises, and he doesn't know why it's happening, doesn't know how to fix it. Rose is still in a different universe, and Jack is with Torchwood. It's been over a year for them, months after the Master died (which meant the Prime Minister dying under suspicious circumstances), and this slow slide of dominoes began. It's been a year for them, but hardly any time at all for the Doctor.

 

(The Doctor, who answered her phone call and came back to an Earth on the brink of a far too early third World War.

"Why didn't you call me sooner?" he'd asked—no, _railed_ —and she'd shrugged, helpless.

"I don't know the future, Doctor," she'd said. "This is _people_. Maybe this is what happens, how would I know? You've never told me _anything_."

"Do you think I'd have just let you walk out of the TARDIS and into this?" he'd asked, slow-burning fury in his voice. "Do you think I'd have let you walk into danger and not said anything?"

She shrugged, again, helpless and furious at that helplessness, furious that she _didn't_ know. "Fixed points," she'd said.

"You are not a fixed point, Martha," he'd said, "And I am going to _fix_ this.")

 

He hadn't. Or rather, he hasn't _yet_. Martha understands the distinction, but she has a thin file sitting on her dresser with her orders, and she has six hours before she has to report, and she will be in another country by this time tomorrow, near the front lines, thrust into something she knows she isn't ready for.

"Martha," he says, again, and she turns towards him, flexing her fingers so he won't notice their unsteadiness.

"Come to see me off?" she asks with forced brightness. He's leaning against the doorway, his face solemn, and she licks dry lips, blinks full eyes.

"Don't do this," he says. "Come with me. We can fix this together, Martha."

"I'm not special," she says. "I don't—that's my friends, Doctor, who are going out there. My friends, and a million other people just like me. I'm going to be a—" she pauses, straightens her shoulders slightly, because she has her diploma, now, doesn't she? Six months early, signed hurriedly by the Dean and handed over with a whisper of praise and eyes full of apology. "I _am_ a doctor. I'm a doctor, and there's people out there dying, and I can't—Doctor, I can't just run off with you."

"It's a _time_ machine," he says, and she hears, for the first time, how unsteady his voice is, the fault lines running through it. "If we don't, if we—if we _can't_ —I can bring you back here. I will bring you back here. But—"

"I said no, Doctor," she says, praying that her voice is as firm as she wants it to be, as final as she needs it to be. "I need you to fix this one on your own." She smiles slightly, shakily. "I have my orders, and now you have yours."

He pushes off the doorway and steps closer to her, until she has to tilt her head up to meet his eyes.

"I can't keep you safe out there," he says, and she wants to shake her head, wants to laugh, wants to shove him.

"I didn't go with you because it was _safe_ , Doctor," she says. "You of all people should know that." His eyes flick away, and maybe, she thinks, maybe that was too harsh, but she thinks it's something he needs to hear. She thinks it's something she's needed to say.

"I'm going to fix this," he says, again, because he's always liked to give people impossible promises. Always promised her the world, and yet so often failed to notice how ready she was to take it.

"I know," she says, because she can be kind to him, she can give him this. She can give him her faith. "I know you will."

He takes another step closer, until they're a foot apart. Less. "Come back alive, Martha Jones," he says, his eyes dark as he looks at her, really looks at her, and she smiles, just a little.

"That's the plan," she says, trying for amusement, trying for anything that will clear the sadness in his eyes.

She presses her hand against his arm, and tilts herself up on her toes to kiss his cheek, just like their last goodbye, but this time he turns his head. His lips are warm against hers, his hand coming up to tangle in her hair, and she thinks of beginnings and of endings, and lets herself open to the kiss, lets her walls peel back for this, for one moment in the eye of the storm. His mouth opens against hers, and she meets him, meets his voiceless helplessness with her own, his guilt of letting her go with her own fear of going, his need for control with her own need for independence.

They pull apart slowly, his hand sliding from her hair to her cheek. She settles back on her heels as his thumb strokes against her cheekbone.

She wonders, fleetingly, if she'll ever see him again.

"Come back alive," he says, again, something like an order in his voice, something like a plea. For all she's learned from him, she's never adopted his magnanimity with promises, but she presses her palm against the hand he's still got cupped against her cheek.

"I always do."


End file.
